Android rush

By Alexei Oreskovic

The Internet company announced last week that it would recycle user IDs that have been inactive for more than 12 months so that other people can claim them, was pressed to defend the plan after critics warned that hackers who take control of inactive accounts could also assume the identities of the accounts' previous owners.

Yahoo Inc. hopes the plan will spark fresh interest in its Web products like Mail, where users prefer individualized user IDs often derived from common names. But criticism of the plan comes at a time when fears over the security of personal information on the Internet have been heightened by revelations of massive U.S. government snooping and international online crime.

Yahoo stressed that it has put in place various safeguards, such as coordinating with other major Web companies including Google Inc and Amazon Inc to minimize the risk of identity theft.

The possibility of identity theft is "something we are aware of and we've gone through a bunch of different steps to mitigate that concern," said Dylan Casey, a senior director for consumer platforms. "We put a lot of thought, a lot of resources dedicated to this project."

Critics say hackers could claim inactive accounts for identity theft. If a Yahoo email is associated with a Google account, for instance, an identity thief with access to the Yahoo email account could use it to reset the Google account password and assume control.

Mat Honan, a Wired magazine writer who has previously written about being the victim of a devastating hacker attack, on Wednesday slammed Yahoo's plan as a "spectacularly bad idea."

"This is going to lead to a social engineering gold rush come mid-July," Honan wrote, referring to hacker tactic of obtaining passwords by deceiving people rather than cracking codes.

But Casey said that the vast majority of inactive accounts were more limited, used for services such as Yahoo's Fantasy Sports that are not tied to an email address and therefore not susceptible to identity theft.
Road More>>

Google has been mum on when it might debut a new version of its wildly popular Android platform. News on the Android update front was expected to arrive during last month's Google I/O developer event, but it never showed up. At this point, the next iteration of Android likely won't show its face until October.
Some of the key changes that will arrive with the next-generation platform, called Android 5.0 Key Lime Pie, will include optimisation for entry device leve. Google has already done this to some degree with Project Butter, an optimization effort that was baked into Android 4.1 Jelly Bean. It will take things much further, however, with Key Lime Pie so that Android devices won't necessarily require dual-core processors and 1 GB of RAM. This will allow hardware makers to create smartphones that have an even lower cost than they do today, which will help further Android's push into emerging markets.



Today's best devices have dual- and quad-core processors in order to power the high-end features such as 1080p HD displays and 1080p HD video capture. These require a significant amount of processing oomph.
The timing of Key Lime Pie's arrival suggests that Google has slowed down the development of Android to one major release per year. Google unveiled Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich in October 2011 and Android 4.2 Jelly Bean in October 2012. Releasing Android 5.0 in October 2013 only makes sense. 

The version history of the Android mobile operating system began with the release of the Android beta in November 2007. The first commercial version, Android 1.0, was released in September 2008. Android is under ongoing development by Google and the Open Handset Alliance (OHA), and has seen a number of updates to its base operating system since its original release. These updates typically fix bugs and add new features.
Since April 2009, Android versions have been developed under a codename and released in alphabetical order: Cupcake, Donut, Eclair, Froyo, Gingerbread, Honeycomb, Ice Cream Sandwich, and Jelly Bean. As of 2013, over 900 million active devices use the Android OS worldwide. The most recent major Android update used now is  Jelly Bean 4.2, which was released on commercial devices in November 2012 and with the introductions.

Below are the versions of android that are currently on the market with their Api level:

1.1 Android alpha
1.2 Android beta
2.1 Android 1.0 (API level 1)
2.2 Android 1.1 (API level 2)
2.3 Android 1.5 Cupcake (API level 3)
2.4 Android 1.6 Donut (API level 4)
2.5 Android 2.0 Eclair (API level 5)
2.6 Android 2.0.1 Eclair (API level 6)
2.7 Android 2.1 Eclair (API level 7)
2.8 Android 2.2–2.2.3 Froyo (API level 8)
2.9 Android 2.3–2.3.2 Gingerbread (API level 9)
2.10 Android 2.3.3–2.3.7 Gingerbread (API level 10)
2.11 Android 3.0 Honeycomb (API level 11)
2.12 Android 3.1 Honeycomb (API level 12)
2.13 Android 3.2 Honeycomb (API level 13)
2.14 Android 4.0–4.0.2 Ice Cream Sandwich (API level 14)
2.15 Android 4.0.3–4.0.4 Ice Cream Sandwich (API level 15)
2.16 Android 4.1 Jelly Bean (API level 16)
2.17 Android 4.2 Jelly Bean (API level 17)

A Chinese company has written to ghanabusinessnews.com seeking to scam its operators with fictitious claims over the domain name.

The company which calls itself Network Technologies with the domain name dot.net.com.cn wrote to inform the managers that “We formally received an application on June 14, 2013 that a company claimed “Mickey Investment Group” were applying to register “ghanabusinessnews” as their Brand Name and some “ghanabusinessnews” Asian countries top-level domain names through our firm.”

According to the scammers, “we found the name were similar to your company’s, so we need to check with you whether your company has authorized that company to register these names. If you authorized this, we would finish the registration at once. If you did not authorize, please let us know within 7 workdays, so that we could handle this issue better. After the deadline we will unconditionally finish the registration for Mickey Investment Group”. Read more>>

One of the constant complaints we hear from wireless and even some wireline ISPs is that the surge in online video demand has put a strain on their networks that leaves them with no choice but to implement unpopular policies such as bandwidth caps. But CNET reports that Google is hoping to make help ISPs significantly ease the strain of video on their networks by pushing its new V9 video technology standard that the company says can help content providers “save about 50% of bandwidth by encoding your video with VP9.” Of course, the VP9 standard hasn’t even been finalized yet and won’t be available for general use until mid-June at the earliest. All the same, Google is promising developers that adopting the new standard will be easy and is promoting it as a free, open source alternative to rival codec H.264.

From Yahoo News

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